His Purple Heart

18 - This ain't no picnic

I followed Trystan out of the hotel room, out onto the bustling streets of Canada. There were people everywhere, and in the distance I could hear music. I didn't exactly know where we were, but it mattered little, because for the first time in a long time, I felt alive.

I was emboldened. I wanted to show off my body, show off my curves. No man had ever looked at me the way Trystan did with his sexy, bedroom eyes. I was a jeans-pants-and-sweatshirt kind of girl, and for tonight's stakeout I had reverted to my old style. Still, Trystan looked at me like I was a model strutting my stuff down the walkway.

As we navigated the streets, he placed his hand on the small of my back and steered me through the crowd of people until we came to a stop at a traffic light. Beside me a young mother held on tightly to her son's hand. He seemed eager to run into oncoming traffic regardless of the consequences. I smiled at her and she smiled back, her grip firm on the little boy.

Trystan glanced down at me and for a second I couldn't read him. His face seemed to be carved out of stone. After a long time, he looked away, but not before I caught the expression of indecision in the depth of his crystal eyes and the deep furrow of his brows.

What was that about?

The light turned green and we crossed with the rest of the crowd to the other side of the street. I laced my fingers with Trystan's. I didn't know why I did; it just felt right. He looked down at our joined hands, but didn't say anything, his expression a blank canvas. I was about to pull away when his grip tightened and then a second later, I felt the lazy stroke of his thumb over my knuckles.

Warmth spread through me and I hid a small smile.

He wasn't rejecting me.

"Where are we going exactly?" I asked.

"We're going to stake out the house where I have to pick up little Antonio tomorrow. I don't want to go in blind," he said as he led me down a dark alley away from the crowd.

The alley took us around a corner, down a few concrete steps to a waterfront. The moon gleamed on the water, casting a bluish glow on the surface. There were barely any clouds up above, and because this area was poorly lit, the stars showed up in the millions, twinkling like diamonds in the sky. The boats at the pier bobbed with the gentle ebb and flow of the water and I could hear the waves lapping against the wooden posts.

"So beautiful," I whispered.

Trystan tugged on my hand and kept us moving along the edge of the water until we came upon a grassy knoll with a few scattered trees here and there. We climbed to the top. Below us a row of houses stretched out lazily along the skyline. From where I stood I could make out the little people moving about inside their homes.

He settled down on the grass and invited me to join him. "I'm sorry, I didn't bring a blanket or anything. This wasn't meant to be a picnic."

"No worries, I can handle a little grass." I sat down with my back to the tree, praying there weren't any bugs on the trunk.

Trystan pulled out a binocular from his backpack and crouched down low on his knees and elbows. He brought the binocular to his eyes and did a quick scan of the horizon. "What about me, can you handle me?"

"As long as he's not eleven inches long." I smirked.

It was a second before my words sunk in. "Then you can't handle me. I'm rocking fourteen inches, baby."